New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless? — The companies are in talks to develop two iPhone-like handhelds that could be unveiled as soon as this year — Verizon Wireless is warming to the idea of an Apple (AAPL) partnership. Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute …

Home Office ‘colluded with Phorm’ — The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on “informal guidance” to the public on whether the company's service is legal. — E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be “comforted” by its position.

Facebook, Firefox, Twitter Lead App, Web Usage — Facebook and Mozilla Firefox are the applications used most across different platforms, according to data collected by Wakoopa, a software-oriented social network. The Amsterdam-based startup offers a small download client that's installed on the desktops of its 75,000 users.

Coming soon: A new, smarter Google News? — Google may be working on a new, intelligent news distribution system, according to Sharon Waxman, a reporter for Hollywood newsblog TheWrap. She approached chief executive Eric Schmidt at a soiree thrown by Arianna Huffington last week …

Zoho preps mobile suite — Zoho on Tuesday rolled out a unified mobile front for its suite of Web applications. — Zoho had offered some basic iPhone and Windows Mobile support previously, but now is unifying applications like Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator into one interface.

Adieu to the old-fashioned desktop computer? — Some giants of the PC industry are just beginning to sell tiny and cheap Netbooks and all-in-one desktops, which have the monitor and processor in the same box. — Tae-Hyun “Tiger” Cho — (Credit: Averatec)

Geocities: Lessons So Far — The Geocities-is-going-away thing broke wide a short while ago. The “Jason is Saving Geocities” thing is breaking wider by the day, so I guess we need an update. — After my initial call-out, a nice selection of folks showed up to the Archive Team IRC channel …

moot wins, Time Inc. loses — This morning Time.com published the final result for their annual TIME 100 Poll. Time reports that the new owner of the title 'Worlds's most influential person, is moot'. What TIME doesn't say is that their poll was so totally manipulated that the results …

With no $10 laptop in sight, India buys 250,000 OLPCs — India has purchased 250,000 XO laptops. This move will boost the One Laptop Per Child project and could help the deflating effort get back on its feet. — The government of India has signed an agreement with the One Laptop Per Child …

Apple iPhone Owners Don't Use It For Work — Do you treat your iPhone as a guilty pleasure? You're not alone. — A new report from Compete surveying the behavior of smartphone users found that 73 percent of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, such as entertainment.

Keep It Simple, Stupid — K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It's a mantra that always pops into my head when I'm looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past. But that's a bad idea.

Socialthing Starts Spreading Across 75 AOL Sites — A couple weeks ago, I spotted the reincarnation of Socialthing on AOL's country-music Website TheBoot and speculated that it would potentially be rolled out across AOL's other MediaGlow properties as well.

Who will cash in on Canada's love for online video? — Canadian TV networks still testing online waters as Hulu looks north — Many TV shows and movies available online in the U.S. are blocked to users in Canada, but Canadians are still among the most voracious consumers of online video in the world.

Windows Live Profile (April) update is here! — As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now! A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include: — 20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm …